The Last Laugh
by kaleidoscope heart
Summary: I know why Sirius laughed, all those years ago, and I know now that I’m going to laugh too. Lupin's thoughts at the end. oneshot DH spoilers.


**AN:** Well, I did it. I swore I would never write Lupin's death scene and here I am. Maybe I needed it for closure... all I know is that this idea grabbed on and wouldn't let go. Please remember to review so I know what you think. All reviews are appreciated. :)

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**The Last Laugh**

I can't believe it's me again: Remus Lupin, the last man standing. Well, not standing exactly… slumped in the floor inches away from the prize I'd sought nearly half my life, maybe. But standing? At this point, that would be foolishly optimistic at best.

Several feet to my right is my wand, where a well-timed curse from a lesser known death eater has knocked it from my hand. The death eater is male, blond, and vaguely familiar to me. I think he must have attended Hogwarts a few years below me, but I can't be sure. At any rate, he's hardly the person I should be concerned with at the moment. No, not by far. My main concern is Dolohov, whom I had been dueling with for several minutes before being disarmed and is now smiling at me as he aims his wand at my chest.

_Finally,_ I think, though I'm still not sure how I feel about such a thought, _Finally it's my turn to die._

I realize suddenly that I've spent my life waiting for this moment, the instance when my luck (if you could call outliving all of your loved ones such a thing) has finally run out. Ever since Lily and James died… no, even before then… way back in the beginning, I always thought it would be me. I had expected to die for my friends and look, they all beat me to the chase. Even Peter.

As my always eloquent wife would say: buggering shit.

I've been accustomed to the idea of dying for a while now, which one might find strange until they've been in such a predicament as I have. The thing is, the _idea_ of death is a fairly easy thing to reconcile with. Actual death… now that is an entirely different matter. Now don't get me wrong here, I'm not daft. I've been in two wars in my lifetime and that was quite enough to make me get over the childish notion that death was something that happened to other people. I knew better. Where the world may discriminate, war doesn't: it kills the good and the bad, wizards and werewolves alike. But even after all these experiences, after all these very rational, very "Professor Lupin"-like thoughts, I am still surprised at how scared I am in this moment. It was Dolohov's smile that did it: that wide, lazy grin that let me know he would enjoy this for no reason at all.

_I'm dying for nothing,_ I think, and suddenly the scales tip from fear to despair at the realization. What does my death accomplish? I have a child at home that will never know me, a child with strangers for parents still. Suddenly I am filled with a memory from teaching during Harry's third year: how excited he had been when he found out I had known his parents. That sad light of hope had poured out of his eyes as I answered his questions… What were they like? How close were we? Were they nice? The idea of it had been so strange to me at the time, that these people that had played such a central part in my life (the people that had created him) were still so unknown to him after all this time. How could that be? How had he missed out on James's infectious laughter or Lily's smart green eyes? How had he not known how good and funny and kind they had been together? The idea of that had been unfathomable at the time.

Now, suddenly, I can fathom it.

Teddy taking his first steps, saying his first words, starting school at Hogwarts, learning magic… all without either of us. It is as if I am disappearing rather than dying… I can see myself fading away out of each memory. Harry would have to tell him about us, much as Sirius and I had tried to do for him. He would have to be the one to tell him how I had been sensible and Tonks clumsy, with all other nuances of ourselves forgotten. It's impossible to explain a full person with their every thought and wish and desire… I knew that from trying. We would be known only in the past tense. Teddy would know what we died for, but what we had lived for? That would be washed away like sand on a beach, never to be recovered.

I've been left behind a lot in my life, for one reason or another. First for being a werewolf, then for just being me… Sensible Remus, Be Careful Remus, Don't Get Killed Remus. Lily and James died and took Peter with them (or so I'd thought at the time) and Sirius had been locked away for their murder, as good as dead himself. So where had that left me? Calm Remus. Nice Remus. Stay Alive Remus.

Then Sirius had come back, and the truth had been discovered. I'll say this now though it pains me to do so: nothing really changed. Not in my heart. After all, it was a little bit unbelievable and there were times when living with Sirius was like living with a ghost. I've never been the best at being optimistic (part of being realistic means realizing that reality is not often pleasant) and that is something I came to terms with long ago. So I never quite believed I had Sirius back, not really. I always had this sneaking suspicion that it would be like this: Remus Lupin, last man slumping. And then he died, proving me right once and for all.

Only sometimes, being right just isn't worth it.

One of the last memories I have of Sirius is sitting at that awful table at 12 Grimmauld Place the night before the fight at the ministry. We had both been drinking (not excessively, but enough) and he was giving me hell over Tonks though I hadn't admitted to liking her yet. Not right out anyways, though Sirius had hardly needed me to.

Three pints in after two nights without sleep and I had finally gotten the nerve to ask Sirius the question I had been waiting years to ask…

_"Did you really laugh?"_

_He had looked up at me with that oh so familiar look on his face: head tilted back, arms crossed over his chest, eyes looking both amused and serious. He knew what I was talking about. The night Peter had blown up that muggle street everyone had told that Sirius had laughed long and hard afterwards, appearing to all as if he'd lost his mind. I had always wondered if that part of the story was true or if it had been exaggerated. Surely a man faced with such horrible circumstances wouldn't laugh. Not even Sirius, I had thought at the time, was capable of such oddness. Though he knew my question, he wasn't about to make it easy on me. After all those years, he was still Sirius and I was still Remus, and that was just the way we were._

_"When? When did I laugh? What do you mean?"_

_I had narrowed my eyes at him across the table but he only smiled. This topic had rarely been broached in the years since getting him back, which should hardly been surprising. The death of our two best friends and his subsequent stint in jail was hardly cheery material for a normal drinking night._

_We had sat there like that for a few minutes in silence, neither of us moving or wanting to give in. Finally he must have taken pity on me because he sighed, slumping forward in his chair. The smile was still there but it was barely the whisper of a real thing. In that moment he looked like a ghost already; I could see through him… but then again, hadn't I always?_

_"Yes," he'd said, his voice firm but quiet. He looked conflicted, but not at all ashamed. I looked at him and, drunk or not, he didn't waiver from my gaze._

_"Why?"_

_There was a moment when he looked at me that night where we were both sixteen again. Unsure, unwise, and unsuspecting. Then he smiled that wide, crazy smile of his._

_"I don't know really… they were all gone and everybody thought it was me. When they went to arrest me, I sort of thought, well why not? And that was funny to me somehow."_

_I had never understood what he had meant by that, but I got the feeling I didn't want to either so I never pushed it. After he died (while laughing, actually. How's that for irony?) I just chalked it up to Sirius's personality. Strange Sirius. Funny Sirius. Unpredictable Sirius. _

I am drawn sharply back into the present day by the sound of a woman's laughter in front of me. It is a high pitched shriek of laughter, not at all pleasant, and I look up to see Bellatrix towering next to Dolohov. I realize for the first time that I am bleeding from my mouth and have spent the last few seconds of my life daydreaming. How very Shakespeare of me.

I know why Bellatrix is laughing. I've known it all along but I avoided the thought of it incase I stood a chance at surviving. I knew that train of thought would be the one to undo me and moments away from death you don't want to become undone. Not if someone like Dolohov is the one you're fighting against. But now that I am sure that this is it, I find my vision wandering.

I see the bright pink of her hair first. She is stretched out on the hard floor behind Bellatrix where I watched her fall only moments before, and her arm is extended in my direction. I wonder if she was reaching for me when she fell and suddenly it's there, that emotion so absent only moments before: the grief, blinding and overwhelming. It is all I can think or feel or see. My throat swells and I think for a second I'm going to be sick as the truth washes over me. I have lost everything, truly. It's just me left and after all these deaths, it is hers I feel the hardest. Sweet, clumsy, loud Tonks. Dora. Reaching for me after all that I've done. Those lost months when I refused her, the weeks when I ran… I realize now what I was doing all that time, always running and pushing. Deep down, I always thought I was being pretty selfless, thinking of her rather than myself. And all along, this moment was what I was running from… this moment like all the others. This time where she was gone and I was still here.

I always knew it wouldn't work.

I want to scream the injustice from the rooftops, that the depth of my love for her would escape me until this last moment. The end. I want to crawl to her and cradle her in my arms, like I would when we first began sharing a bed and everything had been so scary and new.

"I want to grow old with you," she'd told me earnestly, when I had returned from my screaming match with Harry like a dog, tail tucked firmly between my legs.

"Too late for that," I'd laughed, teasing the emotion away, and I had never told her how much those words had meant to me. I wish I had. Merlin, I wish I could scream them.

"Ready to die?" Dolohov asks me, and the question is so damn absurd. Something else bubbles up in my throat and suddenly my body is slammed with understanding. I know why Sirius laughed, all those years ago, and I know now that I'm going to laugh too. And then I do, the sound escaping me with unthinkable ease… it's loud and clear as it echoes in the hallway, ringing out like an alarm as it carries over the screams and curses. What could they do to stop me? What could they honestly hope to take from me? Only my life, and I had been trying to give that away for years.

Bellatrix's smile fades away at my crazy laughter and I wonder if she sees something familiar about it, if it reminds her of Sirius. Dolohov raises his wand again as I continue to laugh. I hear the curse and see the green fill my vision.

I hope I'm still smiling when I fall.

I hope I reach for her.

Sensible Remus. Kind Remus. Slightly Unhinged Just Like All His Friends Remus.

Got the last laugh after all.

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**Well, what do you think? I know it's more logical that Lupin died first, but I wanted to take this approach to it. Review please!**


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